By Our Reporter
Many persons have been picked up by security operatives following an ongoing nationwide crackdown on suspected financiers and collaborators of Boko Haram and other criminal groups in Nigeria.
Sources informed this reporter that the closely-guarded operation is being coordinated by Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), in collaboration with the Department of State Services (DSS), Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
According to the source, huge funds traced to businesses belonging to persons of interest have been blocked in banks in series of “post no debit” letters sent out to banks by the CBN and NFIU. The apex bank has also lately obtained court orders directing freezing of dozens of accounts flagged for suspicious transactions.
The operation commenced last year with massive gathering of intelligence and drawing uplink analysis, leading to initial marking of businesses and individuals.
Reports added that an initial list of 957 suspects comprising bureau de change operators, gold miners and sellers, and other businessmen is being acted upon.
Already, according to the source, about 400 persons have been arrested in series of arrests in Kano, Borno, Abuja, Lagos, Sokoto, Adamawa, Kaduna and Zamfara.
In Kano, traders at the foreign exchange open market in Wapa, Fagge Local Government, were picked up on March 9, 15th and 16th.
Prominent among the BDC operators arrested in the state include Baba Usaini, Abubakar Yellow (Amfani), Yusuf Ali Yusuf (Babangida), Ibrahim Shani, Auwal Fagge, and a gold dealer, Muhammad Lawan Sani.
Our reporter gathered that many businessmen have been invited to DSS offices and military barracks.
Meanwhile when contacted family members of the suspect told this reporter that they have had no communication since their arrest.
Worried over the spate of insecurity, the president gave his approval for the exercise to be conducted.
Because this is economic warfare against the insurgents and other militant groups, the president, when approving the operation directed that the NFIU take the lead as the country’s financial intelligence powerhouse.
“With the presidential approval, a task team was composed made up of personally selected senior officers who were deployed under the DIA to carry out the special assignment,” a senior government official said.
One official involved in the operation, who however craved for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the operation has recorded immense success with the arrest of key persons with “direct” link to bandits and insurgents.
“The main person coordinating the funding ring for Boko Haram is in our custody, he and his closest ally in the business,” he said.
According to the source, about 19 BDCs owned by persons with “direct connection with Boko Haram” were uncovered, while over N300 billion was found to have been pumped into the funding of terrorism in the country.
“A number of those arrested have divulged vital information including operational details of bandits and Boko Haram insurgents. But they are being kept to aid further arrests,” he said.
According to him, not all the affected businessmen arrested were members of the criminal gangs but many of them were involved in it as a business.
In a related development collaborators of Boko Haram insurgents among security agents were picked up.
“About 20 of them were arrested in Borno and detained. In the course of interrogation they revealed a lot including the identity of some of their civilian collaborators who were also arrested,” a source said.
The ongoing operation, is the first phase of activities lined up by the task team to unfold the puzzle of how Boko Haram, kidnappers and other criminals fund their operations and launder the proceeds.
Last week, the bank announced the freezing of 193 corporate and individual bank accounts over allegations of suspicious forex transactions. This is in addition to 138 accounts frozen in February.
In a February 24, 2021 memo to commercial banks from the CBN, which was sighted by our reporter, the apex bank directed the banks to “place the accounts of the under listed customers on Post-No-Debit with immediate effect”. The bank did not give reasons for the order.
Operators of the accounts, mostly international businessmen decry the sudden measure without fair hearing. Some of the affected traders, are businessmen who import wares from China. One of them, a Kaduna-based businessman, Alhaji Sani Polo, is said to have over N200 million, including bank loans, trapped in his accounts.
However an anti-money laundering specialist, Umar Yakubu, in a report noted that the ongoing operation maybe applying the wrong medicine for the disease of terrorism financing.
He explained that outlawed groups like Boko Haram do not usually come in through the banking system, making it difficult to trace through the use of banks’ Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs).
He said the way to crack the financial transactions of criminal elements like insurgents and their collaborators is through informal tracking through “raw, old school investigation technique” which require life time intelligence on people’s lifestyle to identify persons getting rich overnight.
Yakubu further explained that the security agencies should tackle the problem by putting more emphasis on the country’s borders, which he described as porous and easy passage for money and other logistics.
However relatives and associates of the arrested businessmen, however, insisted that they were innocent of allegations.
“There is no way they will finance or aid anything criminal,” said a businessman in the market, Mohammed Sani.
According to him his relative interact’s with all manner of people, it is therefore difficult to know the real background and identity of a customer.
He called for a thorough investigation to establish the real truths, especially by establishing if those arrested were conscious of the identity of the persons they were alleged to have helped, or not.
Sani Ali Yusuf, whose two brothers and two cousins were among those arrested described the allegations against his siblings as untenable.
He said persons engaged in an illegal transaction like terrorism financing are likely to be “few and secretive, not this prominent and so many”.
“Most of the people arrested are prominent businessmen at Wapa. I am sure if there will be a thorough investigation, they will find out that this is not true,” he said.
“Financing terrorism or even money laundering is not something my brothers engage in.
“Of course in their line of business, as I understand it, a criminal may come forth and they deal with him without them knowing. It is like a transporter who is given some goods to transport. If cartons are given to them in the name of fish, he has no way of finding out if indeed it was fish that was inside or something else,” he said.
President of the Association of Bureau de Change Operators of Nigeria (ABCON), Alhaji Aminu Gwadabe, appealed to the authorities concerned to speed up investigation on the issue in order “for those who are culpable to face the law and the innocent ones to be released”.
He said his association supports any measure by the government in fighting illegalities, but asked the authorities to be careful so that those who are innocent do not suffer unnecessarily. He confirmed arrests of a number of the association’s members in places such as Kano, Abuja, Sokoto, Zamfara, Niger and Borno, saying the association was following a “non-confrontational approach” to resolve the issue.
“The issue is very dicey that is why we are being careful. It is an issue that started from a foreign country and that is why the presidency took it with all seriousness also.”
Gwadabe said efforts by officials of the association to meet the incarcerated members of ABCON was resisted, even after the initial promise of access by the DSS.
Spokesperson for the Nigerian Army, Major General Mohammed Yerima, said he was not aware of the arrest of army officers in connection with allegation of collaboration with Boko Haram elements.
He also referred the question on the military’s involvement in the operation to the DSS, saying issues to do with arrests on charges of terrorism financing is under the purview of the DSS.